Frikkin Fagin (Booster)

NEW YORK, SLUMS

There was no city that was exempt from crime, even one being rapidly rebuilt as the devastated New York. Perhaps especially New York, as its outlying neighborhoods away from the more redeveloped areas were still mired in Poverty. Regardless, there were always efforts to help, and today a small caravan of private citizens brought some food and clothes for the people living in these outlying areas.

Diana Mendoza, the sponsor, watched from the sidelines as the people were helping people. Blue collar, white collar, single moms, teenagers, all races and classes were coming together to help the less fortunate who couldn't quite leave this area.

Several unruly children ran behind Diana, playing rough and bumped into her as they passed through. Diana looked at them with a harsh glare, fixing her cold weather attire. She was quite covered up and wore her hood-scarf down, daytime not agreeing with her very much.

"Hey. Who are those kids?" Diana asked one of the volunteers.

"Beats me, miss. We usually don't bother with names... but that group of kids I haven't seen before." The portly man in the baseball hat and checkered shirt said.

"Oh... what a bunch of twerps..." A thought quickly crossed Diana's mind. She checks her pockets, and much to her suspicions her wallet was gone. "HEY! Where do you think you're going?! GET BACK HERE!" Diana sprints after the kids, leaving the charity area. The large, empty neighborhoods made for easy hiding places, which irritated Diana more. The children take shortcuts through debris laden alleys.

"Damnnit.. Get back here!" Diana begins her pursuit. Though she was faster, the cramped alleyways were to the children's advantage.  The child Diana pegged as having her wallet was pretty nimble passing through some wreckage, evading the teenage girl. Diana looked around in frustration for a way through, deciding to power through instead and climb up on the mouldings and windows, parkouring her way up and over. Chase! chase! chase! Diana finds even more garbage, more difficult terrain, and cussed even more. The fact it was daytime made her moves a bit sluggish.

For the past two days, Derrick had been following reports of a roving gang of pickpockets  slowly moving through the rebuilding city. It aggravated his personal code to no end. It was bad enough when people preyed on the defenseless, but to do so now, instead of helping the city recover? Opportunists disgusted him. He had managed to track their movements and narrowed their base of operations down to a four block  radius. Still a large area, but manageable considering the devastation.  There were people milling about giving much needed supplies to the people eking out an existence in one of fringe areas.  Lot of people, but it meant more chance of someone getting hit as well.  Easy to get lost in a crowd.

But he was in luck too, because after an hour of canvassing from the rooftops, he caught a break when a woman started shouting and chasing a group of kids. It didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened, but Derrick was perturbed, having not suspected the criminals to be so...young. It was possible that they were being coerced, but just as likely that they had turned to stealing in lieu of having parents. Much had been lost, and the new york assault had been no respecter of persons. Still, it meant that he wasn't going to attack them as vigourously as he might have otherwise. Kids and teens had a chance to change.  But that still left the woman.  

Metahuman?  Definitely moving too quickly to not have some kind of slightly enhanced reflexes or agility. Perhaps both.  Derrick chuckled softly to himself. Those youthful pickpockets were looking like they had bit off more than they could chew if their mark was indeed powered.  With a grunt, Derrick was carried forward and up by his grappling gun, landing a few feet away from the woman with his power staff out in front of him horizontally.

It was lightweight, the non electrified middle composed of several metals including tungsten, silver, and steel, just to name a few; he had always felt that composites worked better for him, and they were significantly harder to break than wood.  He gave the woman a cautious nod. "We appear to be tracking the same perps." he said in a low voice.  "The two of us could cover more ground. The name's Knightstaff." As he ended his statement, he offered her a tentative handshake. Derrick knew he was new to the cape scene, and he still wasn't sure about  all the protocol when allying with other capes, especially potential metas.  

But he knew that confidence was key, and since they both appeared to want to collar the same pickpockets, approaching her seemed prudent. He studied her from up close, seeing that she was nearly a foot shorter than him, as well as younger than he had first thought. Had to be in her late teens or early twenties. Even so, age and powers were not mutually exclusive.

Diana was still in the middle of the chase, not realizing she'd been seen. The cape came from out of nowhere, probably grappled down, offering a neutral Bojutsu stance. Pertinent information about staff combat ran through her head in an instant, as well as getting a rough estimate of the staff's reach, its owner's own height, weight and reach, its unusual electrified tips and the composite body, as well as the probable weakpoints in his suit. If he had the skill to use that weapon, he'd be a serious challenge to her.

All these thoughts ran through her head in about a fraction of a second, before Diana simply ran past, not really having the time to be impressed by this hero type.

"WELL DON'T JUST STAND THERE HE'S GETTING AWAY!" She said in a most distressed and irritated tone, typical of someone who just had their things stolen. She pointed as the boy turned a corner, Diana barely keeping up, having to scale fences and run on the walls. The boy was running down an alley as fast as his small frame could, but his his movements were aided by intimate knowledge of the area.

If he wasn't stopped soon he might give the two heroes the slip through a small, barely noticable crack in the side of one of the ruined buildings. Diana picked up a loose piece of broken concrete and chucked it, missing the boy by half an inch, slowing him down slightly but not deterring the boy. It was up to Knightstaff now to catch him...

To his surprise and dismay, the woman did not return the introduction, but barreled past him after her loud shout, clearly more interested in reclaiming her property.  She returned to hopping fences and practically running on walls, and Derrick obliged by grappling to a rooftop two buildings away, intending to catch their quarry in a pincer movement.

He moved quickly, or at least, as fast as he could under the circumstances; he was no meta, but he trained for speed, all lean muscle and wiry strength, his general mode of transportation and fighting style not really allowing for bulk. It made him agile, perhaps on par with Olympic runners if not a little bit under their skill level.

With a combination of grappling and pole vaulting, Derrick managed to get ahead of the boy by scant seconds, landing in front of the small pathway that the criminal was attempting to get to, and used his weapon to knock the youth to the ground; though he left the taser off as he felt it was unnecessary.  

"You know kid, this would go a lot better for the both of us if you hand over the wallet now."  He put emphasis on the last word, holding his bo staff out in a beckoning manner.  But he decided he'd wait for the woman who had been divested of the possession in question to catch up before taking any further action against the young thief.

The little boy was taking fast, sharp breathes now from their little cardio exercise. Diana caught up, but was less winded. He looked at his pursuers in abject fear like some scared little cat ready to pounce away on all fours.

"Good... job... you caught him." Diana complimented Knightstaff, now that the running was over. She dragged the child closer to a commercial street, with diners, sports shops, auto shops, convenience stores and the like.

The boy didn't respond to Knightstaff's request. He just stared at him rather blankly.

"Bwisit kang bata ka." Diana mumbled something resembling harsh cursing in her native tongue, picking up the kid by his collar. "Ugh, ambaho mo pa, walang ligo!" Diana squeezed her nose in the child's proximity. Now that they could see the child up close, he was pretty filthy and had the odor of someone who had never seen soap or shampoo before. His hair though was short, but cut unevenly and pretty ugly.

"Well? Where's my wallet?" Diana prodded the child, waiting for an answer impatiently. The child was still not forthcoming, not even looking at them as they spoke, so she began turning his pockets inside out. It turned up nothing. It was then Diana noticed the lash marks on his arms and back. A bit too numerous even for someone living in the slums.

"Must've played hot potato with your friends. Well. Tell us where they are." Diana asked, or rather commanded, but she toned it down on the aggression a bit.

Diana looked at the child with a most mean stare, but he still wouldn't answer, his eyes darting around his environment, shaking slightly.

"Hoy bata, usap ka naman. Kid, I'm talking to you. What's your name?" Still nothing. The boy shivered slightly in the weather. Diana then realized a possibility.

"Waitaminute. Do you even understand me? Can you even talk?" She sighed, then looked at Knightstaff, then at the boy, then Knightstaff again, wondering if the answer was going to magically appear on his face.

The boy's stomach growled, his expression one of pained hunger. Without much shame he switched from pick pocket to beggar, gesturing for Knightstaff to give him a meal, looking at him with sad little puppy eyes, tugging on his armored arm. Diana was the scary lady, and Knightstaff seemed less threatening.

"Oh no. First you rob us, then you try to pull this? You think we're stupid?" Diana said, clearly disapproving of the boy's lack of dignity but not quite showing empathy for the boy's possible plight. She looked at the boy and struck up a deal. "...Are you gonna tell us where your friends are if we feed you?"

she asked, but nowhere during their conversation did the boy indicate he understood- until she uttered the word feed. He gestured them to feed him, rubbing his belly, even bringing the crocodile tears, pointing at the diner. Seemed the boy was a born actor. Oscar worthy in fact. boo hoo.

While the boy had nothing to say, Diana did, and Derrick nodded as she dragged the boy to a less noticeable location.  She was a little physically rougher on the kid than Derrick would have been, but he supposed vigilantes came in all flavors, and the boy had stolen something.  Even so, the would be thief didn't appear to be a threat in the slightest.  Judging from the state of his clothing and his lack of personal hygiene, Derrick would have guessed that the kid had been living on the streets for awhile, maybe since the end of the assault. Maybe even before it.  As the woman checked the thief over, her search turned up nothing, not her property or anything else for that matter, though he did note the presence of scar tissue on the arms, and a few on his back showing through rents.

When no answers or even acknowledgements of the questions were forthcoming, the woman looked at both other people in the area in exasperation, at least until the kid's belly made a noticeable sound and he began pitifully begging for something to eat, pantomiming the motions in lieu of saying anything. and ramping it up when the woman mentioned food.  So perhaps he understood enough.  Derrick grimaced.  If he didn't have the wallet, then he must have pawned it off on one of the other street children he had been running with or stashed it somewhere along the way. Which meant there was a good chance that they were wasting their time with the kid. After all, a person of his age did not learn tactics like this  on their own. Derrick figured there had to be an adult connected to the situation. An old scam, using children as disposable operatives. It sounded like something out of Oliver Twist, but it happened,  unfortunately it still happened.  The alternative was that a group of street kids had the smarts to get their very own criminal organization underway, and that was not a thought that he wanted to entertain.

After a few minutes of quiet contemplation, Derrick uttered a sigh. "Watch him."  After collapsing his staff, he shot his grappling hook towards the diner and zipped away. They didn't have a drive through, but they did have a back door. He scaled the roof and dropped to other side, opening the door experimentally, and wishing that someone had been on their smoke break.  They hadn't, but a cursory glance around the kitchen showed him that a few plates had been made up and were waiting for the waitress.  The cook was in front of the fryer and hadn't heard him come in. Derrick crouched down and stalked carefully over to the waiting food, sliding a plate off the counter and inching his way back to the door after depositing the food in a styrofoam container and carefully placing the plate on the floor.  He made it out just in time to hear the waitress ask where the third order for table nine was.

He felt bad about having to steal the food, but he reminded himself that it was for the greater good.  Though  at some point he'd have to return to the diner and leave some cash. A quick glance at the menu should tell him how much a cheeseburger with fries went for. A few grapples later and he was back in the alleyway with the woman and the kid, the latter of which grabbed for the package eagerly.  But Derrick held it up and out of reach. "Answers first." Mimicking the kids earlier miming, Derrick pointed at the woman and then reached in her pocket before pointing at the kid then back to the woman. Then he pointed at the food he was holding in the crook of one arm.

"Wallet, then food. You understand? He hoped the urchin got the gist, if not, there was one other card he could play, though it was rusty from disuse. "Lo entiendes?"

Diana stood outside and waited for Knightstaff to return, once he decided that getting the kid some food might be the only way to cooperate.

A pick up truck rolls past, driven by Paul the Plumber, one of the volunteers. Just your average, everyday, slightly obese mid-40's white male with a kind heart.

"Hey Diana. We're about done with the food drive. You need a lift?" He asked, as he slowed to a halt in front of her.

"No. I'm fine Paul. I just have... things..." Looked at the child "to take care of."

"Okay. Here's your stuff. Take care now, little lady. Oh, it's heavy! you got lots of art tools in there I'm guessing." Paul hands Diana her art tube and her backpack, which quickly garner the boy's attention. Diana shot him a challenging look, daring him to do something stupid.

Diana sighed, wearing her backpack and tube, and looked at the kid. So far he's been itching to run, and only wised up knowing Diana's hands were quick. Meanwhile She saw that the hero had opted for a five fingered discount at the diner.

"Stealing food? Tsk tsk. Tomorrow you'll be killing the younglings at the Jedi temple. Wouldn't it have been easier to just walk up to the counter and order?" Diana commented, lamp shading the hero's choices of actions with a snarky reference to Episode III, whilst keeping quiet on her own hypocrisy.

The boy looked at Knightstaff and nodded, pointing to the crevice where he would make his escape, making movement gestures, implying he'd show the way. Diana looked disappointed, it felt like he was now gonna sell out his crew for a burger and some fries. Judging from how greedily he takes the food and scarfs it down, he must have been starved. He doesn't even bother chewing- he stuffs as much as he can into his mouth as fast as he can, he chokes a moment.

"Hey slow down there." Diana was beginning to pity the kid, much as that was a stupid move. The burger evaporated in front of their eyes, and the kid begins heading to the crevice, gesturing them to follow. Indeed it was just big enough for Knightstaff to crawl through. The boy vanishes into the gloomy building, and Diana took out an older model of smartphone from her bag to use its flashlight.

"I guess we should call the police. Or social services. After I get my wallet." Diana commented to Knightstaff, getting on all fours and following the kid. "Are you coming along? I got a feeling these kids might give us trouble."

Derrick rolled his eyes at her comment, even as he wondered where the hell she had gotten a backpack in the time that he had been gone. Or for that matter, how she had known that he hadn't paid for the food. Then again, he had grappled up and over the diner to the back, so it was sort of easy  to infer."Yeah, I should have just walked up to the counter dressed like this and pulled my wallet out. " he looked down at himself in mock horror, before continuing in a dry tone.

"Too bad that its in my other pants, along with anything that could be used to identify me. "   At any rate, it appeared that the kid understood the motions, if not english, spanish or tagalog , so Derrick reluctantly handed over the food.  It vanished  rather quickly, with the boy beckoning for the pair to follow him.

It was hard not to feel bad for the kid, even with pickpocketing it was obvious that the boy wasn't getting enough nutrition. Desperate time and desperate measures. He wondered briefly what would have happened if he hadn't decided to step in to help with the mugging. As the kid went through the opening and the woman followed, Derrick nodded when she made some suggestions.  Social services, even as burdened as they were might have been the better option for the youth instead of the police.

There were real criminals out there after all,  and of course the super powered kind. This kid? Nothing compared to that.  The staff was collapsed and hooked to his belt as he knelt down to follow the pair to wherever it was that they were being led. The woman insinuated that the kid could possibly be leading them into a trap, but it was laughable to think that a couple of street urchins could give the two of them trouble.

Between his staff and her enhanced reflexes, it was doubtful. "You know, he began as he crawled after her, "You still haven't told me your name."

"Me? I'm Diana Mendoza." She said, privately wondering if her 1-year-old sports stardom ever made her famous. Ah, why bother, nobody would watch Kendo. Especially not some wash-out like her.

Diana noted just how horrifically unsafe this place was, dilapidated and crumbling as it was- not to mention dark. Good thing she charged her phone before turning on the light. She was also thinking when the kid was going to make a run for it... She lost sight of the boy a minute but tracked him by scent- it wasn't that hard.

He waves at them and made his way into the empty basement of the abandoned apartment. There was dust, trash and moldy furniture everywhere, and Diana coughed. "You could hide a lot of dead bodies here." She decided to make a morbid joke.

She covered her mouth with a balaclava. As long as her light was on the kid he wouldn't scram. They make their way to a small hatch that led to the sewers.

A thought crossed Diana's mind as the hatch was opened and the boy was climbing down. "Slow it down kid." She warned him from going too fast. She adjusted her art tube a little, knowing the feel of the clamp by heart in the dark.

"Hey I said slow down!" She raised her voice at the kid when he decided to slid down the ladder than climb down. Diana makes it sounds like she 'snags', and her tube fell down. "Ah crap!" she cussed as the tube makes a... splash. Oh god, it's wet down there isn't it...

"Hey kid don't move!" Diana decided to just slide down, landing with a splash, the feel of wet sewer water on her boots making her cringe. "EWWWWW."

"Ho.ly. crap. The kid took my stuff! AGAIN!" Diana looked around and the kid was gone, her tube opened and empty, using her light to look around. Lots of tunnels, no kid in sight.

The name he had been expecting was her hero name, not her actual name, though he supposed maybe she was simply a lightly powered civilian.  The building was also more disgusting than he had expected as well.  The followed the kid down a hatch that led to the sewer system, and that's where things went wrong. The person they were following gave them the slip faster than he would have thought possible, and managed to take the contents of the tube Diana had been carrying to boot. While she uttered her distress at losing more of her property, Derrick looked around at the mass of tunnels and grimaced. He wasn't going to be able the track the kid, and he doubted that she'd be able to either. "I have my suspicions that there is something bigger going on here, but...I'm not going to be much help tracking a kid through the sewers.." he sighed in irritation before turning to climb back up the ladder. "I'm going to see if I can find anyone else that either knows this kid, or the group he runs with. Meet me on the roof of that diner in two days? Unless you have a way of finding him ?"

Diana's distress turned to amusement as she smirked to Knightstaff. "Well. Looks like we can depend on the kid for one thing- that he is a thief and he doesn't go home empty-handed."

She switched off her phone light and the tunnels went pitch black. Now Knightstaff had to contend with the darkness... "Makes me wonder how the kid navigates the tunnels. Well then, give me a moment."

The answer was questioned when, some glow-in-the-dark marks began to light up in the tunnel. "Oh. that's... pretty clever."

In the dark as her senses came into play, one could see the crimson pinpricks in Diana's eyes. She took out her back up phone and switched on the Phone-Finder App. Even deep in the tunnels the signal was able to reach her. "Oh good! signal's a bit weak... but this way."


LAIR OF THE SEWER KING

Deeper into the abandoned tunnels, Past an underground waterfall that emptied into an underground river, they walked for a few minutes. Then there was a short swim through a flooded tunnel subway, Diana keeping her phone and head above the water line for this one. Then there was a steep slide, the boy would eventually reach the abandoned station turned lair.

Partly a cave complex and part station, the lair was a small, inward facing, circularly arranged sheds built with scrap wood and metal sheets attached to the abandoned station stalls. A larger, more "grand" shanty-house with lots of eclectic looking junk was built at the top of a escalator and staircase with torches.

The boy thief's arrival had drawn the attention of the thirty or so children like himself out of their sheds, the little ones staring at their compatriot in the dim torch lights of the lair. He had brought a mobile phone with him... but more impressive, was the sheathed katana tied to his back, its golden filigreed tsuba (handguard) and tsuka (handle) garnering a strange chorus of three claps from them.

An older figure emerges from the "chief's hut". He was a man of advanced age, dour with wrinkles, greasy black hair a mess about his face. An eyepatch covered his left eye under his old fashioned, metal framed glasses. He wore a red coat and walked with a cane and a limp, as he scratched his large nose and tightened his belt on his baggy trousers. His steps were heavy with the boots he wore.

"MUTT! you are LATE! You had best have brought ME Shinies if you wish to avoid the room..." A harsh, cockney rasp and cough escaped from the old man, his crude temper barely contained as he lifted his cane to strike. The boy trembled in fear but offered him the japanese sword. The old man's eyes widened at the sight of a most rare prize.

"Aaahhh... What wonderful treasure you've brought me. EVERYONE COME OUT!" He snatched it out of the boy's hands, inspecting its every detail. Pure gold... he wondered if it was more valuable as a whole, or if he'd have to dismantle the handle.

"You see. This is the kind of treasure I can be thankful for. With this. we will. all. eat. Well done Mutt. Well done." He said, in a calm tone, then pausing.

"BUT YOU STILL DISOBEYED MY RULES!" He suddenly began shouting, his one good eye wide with hysteria.

Diana and Knightstaff would eventually catch up around here. They could approach quietly, and Diana opted to do so, crouching down to minimize her noise and profile. Closer to the ground she noticed the large amounts of canned dog food and plastic ware littered everywhere in piles, attracting flies, roaches and other vermin.

Diana watched in stunned silence as the boy they'd fed was being man handled by some English bum, being manhandled by his frail arm.
One of the children whimpered when the man did so. Then he exploded into a rant.

"Did I hear someone talk? Hm? HM?! IS THIS THE DISRESPECT YOU SHOW ME? I RAISED YOU ALL. I FEED YOU ALL. NO ONE IN THIS WORLD WANTED ANY OF YOU! BUT I DID." He walked around the crowd of children, still dragging the boy along, who was crawling at this point, stumbling with the englishman's strides.

"I CARED! EACH ONE ABANDONED, UNLOVED! I LOVE EACH AND EVERYONE OF YOU, AND ALL I ASK... IS A LITTLE RESPECT, AND A LITTLE OBEDIENCE, SO WE CAN ALL SURVIVE IN THIS CRUEL WORLD! AND THE FIRST. RULE. IS. ABSOLUTELY. NO. TALKING!" The man was red in the face as he bellowed at the children, who were completely and utterly in the man's control.

"AND WHEN YOU BREAK THE RULES. YOU. MUST. BE. DISCIPLINED!" The man shoves Mutt into a cage. In the adjacent cells were large, ugly rabid dogs, their jaws inches away from reaching Mutt; he was absolutely terrified, huddled in the corner of his cage just out of reach. One bite would all it took. One bite.

"BACK TO SLEEP!" The man bellowed, retiring to his hut. The other children crawled back into their sheds as ordered. He brought the katana with him.

Diana watched in stunned silence. For a moment she couldn't say anything at all from what she saw, shocked at the sheer... madness, the sheer cruelty this man displayed. Street criminals and metahuman villains were entertaining in their resistance, but this... this... caused a barely contained rage to swell up in her. She wound her hands into fists so hard as to cause her body to tremble.

Knightstaff would have to shake her out of it.